Diagnostic Test Ch. 02 - AI Era

"It's actually about that bot in particular..." After a moment of hesitation, I launched into the story of how I met Renee and the whole diagnostic test (sparing most of the raunchy details). I thought it would be hard to get the story out, but once I started, the words rushed out of me like I'd opened the floodgates. I guess the stress of the whole situation had been weighing down on me, and I just needed to get it out. Crick listened patiently, asking a few clarifying questions here and there as I spilled my guts. Finally, I got to the part where I ran out of Lyssa's office, and I trailed off. I met Crick's eyes, and he looked at me in silence for a moment. Then, his lips slowly cracked into a wide smirk.

"I can't believe you fell in love with a bot. You!" I just stood and stared at him, dumbfounded, as he burst into laughter.

"What?" I finally sputtered, trying to wrap my head around what he had just said. He was still laughing in delight. "I am not in love- How did you get that from that story?" He focused his watering eyes on me long enough to raise his eyebrows at me. I slapped him on the arm, then yelped in pain and shook out my hand. That was the metal one.

"Oh my god, I'm not- she's a bot, I couldn't- I can't believe you would think that," I stammered out. "After she manipulated and lied to me? I hate her!" Crick's laughter was dying down, and he shrugged.             

"Asking me to hack into her database log to check if she was ok doesn't seem very hateful," he said nonchalantly. I narrowed my eyes at him.

"I don't- Look, she's a bot, ok? I feel no particular strong feelings towards her, because she's not a human being, she's ones and zeros and nuts and bolts." He nodded in a way that showed he didn't believe me in the slightest, so I ignored him. "I was just curious why her entry was gone, since my diagnostic test should've given her the all clear."

"The test where you screwed her. And fell in love with her." I blushed involuntarily, and slapped him on the arm again (the non-metal one this time).

"Shut up and keep hacking, code monkey." He chuckled again, but turned back to the computer.

"Touchy touchy," he muttered, and went back to paging through the log. He scrolled down to some of the newer changes, and I saw the words "diagnostic test" fly by.

"Wait, go back a little." He centered an entry that showed a change in the notes section of the page, an area that had always been empty when I had looked at it. It had been added on the day I'd met Renee.

5.8 Added "'[Clearance level 5: Bot underwent 8th Diagnostic test. Succeeded in prime directive. Possible issues found in negative attitude towards superiors/missions, insurgent sentiments mentioned. May have been used as means for gaining trust in the target, but check the bot's learning network anyway. Success was unexpected, as the target is known to harbor anti-bot sentiments, so results indicate major improvement in previously found problem areas of the AI. Possible reintroduction to higher-stakes missions is currently being considered.]"

Directly underneath was another paragraph, added a few days after the first one.

5.9 Added "[Clearance level 5: Bot has been moody and despondent since last Diagnostic Test. Was given a small, low-stakes intelligence mission for reintroduction purposes. Complete failure. Bot showed no motivation to complete the directive and blew the cover of another agent who was assigned to watch it. Starting to become more trouble than it's worth. The bot's primary missions director has put in a petition to declare the software unsalvageable and reallocate all resources to the production of REN 3.4. Hearing will be conducted on the 25th of the month, 18:00.]"

The very last change was dated today in the early afternoon.

Entry deleted. Reason given: N/A

We sat in silence, even after we had both finished reading the paragraphs. Crick was fiddling with a bolt on his robotic arm. He was constantly fidgeting, but it always got worse when he was nervous or thinking.

"But..." I started hesitantly, trying to make sense of what I'd read. "Why would she fail? I thought she was working perfectly? That's what my diagnostic test showed, anyway." Crick shrugged, keeping his eyes on the screen.

"Maybe some of what she told you was true..." he said. I scoffed, but I couldn't deny that I had been thinking the same thing. Was she really-

"Hang on," Crick blurted, interrupting my train of thought. "The 25th of the month? Isn't that today?" He checked the watch that was embedded into the metal of his arm.

"Yeah, it is! Her hearing's happening today! And holy shit, it started five minutes ago!" Crick minimized the changelog windows and started typing furiously. "They usually have to record these things for legal purposes, so maybe we can hack into the feed. I just have no idea what they'd be using to record. If this was a little more official, they'd probably be using a Stenograbot, but somehow I doubt they'd have one if this is such a hush-hush thing. Maybe I can look through the security cams in the offices, but there's no way to know what office they'd be in-"

"Crick!" I snapped, finally cutting off his avalanche of thoughts. He stopped typing and turned to look at me.

"Do you think you could hack into the feed from Renee's eyes?" I asked, and his eyebrows quirked up. "She's probably gonna be at her own hearing, and I know her eyes are constantly streaming. I think they're CamEyes, version five point something, but what was the brand..." His eyes lit up.

"CyBio Inc?" He asked excitedly. I nodded.

"Yeah, that sounds right. Why, do you know them?" Crick let out a burst of laughter and turned back to the screen, typing with even more fervor than before.

"Oh yeah. I did some consulting work for them a while back, checking some of their newer releases for security issues and stuff like that. Showed them some massive security flaws, easily accessible backends, just ticking time bombs waiting to blow. They didn't listen, they were too lazy to fix any of them before release. I have no idea why they're still in business, their parts are a breeze to get into if you have half a brain." With a few final clicks and a flourish of his hand, a camera feed appeared on the screen. "And I'm not even talking about my brain."

I leaned in, my heart immediately starting to race. The feed was from the perspective of someone sitting in a chair and looking into an empty office. It didn't take me long to realize that this was Lyssa's office, the one I'd stormed out of what felt like ages ago.

"Did I get the right feed?" Crick muttered, checking some data on another screen. "Why is it just an empty office?" The camera suddenly panned down, and a pair of legs came into view, one of them bouncing nervously up and down. A strawberry-blonde curl fell into frame. A sharp, aching pang shot through my heart, but I suppressed whatever feelings were bubbling up as quickly as they had come.

"This is the right feed. That's her," I breathed. Crick turned his attention back to the camera feed just as the door to the office opened offscreen. The view whipped up and stared straight ahead, stock still. Footsteps and murmuring voices grew louder as three people walked into frame. One of them was Lyssa, but I didn't recognize the two men.

"-get this done quickly, shall we?" One of the men finished saying as everyone sat down. Nobody acknowledged Renee's presence. The man who'd spoken was a good deal larger than the other one, his suit, haircut, and the expression on his face all crisp and no-nonsense. The other man was slightly more disheveled and much shorter. He wore a labcoat over an engineer's jumpsuit, both hanging loosely on his scrawny frame.

"You think he's the engineer that built Renee?" I whispered to Crick, pointing to the labcoat guy.

"One of the many, I assume. Probably the lead engineer, I don't know why he would be there otherwise. Bit cliche to wear a labcoat around, if you ask me. Who's the other guy, though?"

"No idea."

"You know, you don't have to whisper, they can't hear us-" I cut Crick off with a frantic shoosh, because Lyssa was starting to talk.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet, gentleman." Lyssa said, her voice oily enough to tell me that these two men were very important. "I know there's been some conflict regarding what to do with the REN 3.3, but I'm confident we can sort it all out today." The man in the suit scoffed and leaned back in his chair.

"I don't see what's left to discuss. We all know what the solution is," He huffed, his tone bored and irritated. The man in the labcoat shook his head.

"Riggs, I've told you that you're being too hasty," he said, still shaking his head. "We've already put so much into this model-"

"And that's the problem, Carrow," Riggs fired back. "We're putting all our resources and time and money into a lost cause." Carrow made a noise and threw up his hands.

"A lost cause!" Carrow repeated, incredulous. "This is the most advanced piece of machinery this company has ever created, it's the cutting edge of tech-"

"I don't care how 'cutting edge' it is, what I care about is how well it completes a mission," Riggs sneered, pointing a meaty finger at Renee without looking at her. "It could be the world's most technologically advanced toaster for all the good it's doing me right now." Carrow opened his mouth to say something, but Riggs barrelled on.

"We put it into a low stakes mission for practice, right? Just extracting some easy information from a target. Completely failed it. The thing got drunk and made a scene, and it blew the cover of a double agent we had stationed in the area. Why is it even able to get drunk? It's a bot, for fuck's sake!" Carrow picked nervously at the collar of his labcoat. Lyssa was furiously typing notes, head swiveling between the two men like it was a tennis tournament.

"Well, it's got to do with the chemistry behind creating a realistic response to stimuli-" Carrow started, but Riggs cut him off again.

"It's moody, insolent, and unpredictable. We wanted to use bots to avoid this kind of shit. I know for a fact that there are several other bot manufacturers with REN models in stock, so I see no reason to keep working with Ple(Ai)sure if this continues." Lyssa opened her mouth to say something, but Carrow cut her off with a cold laugh

"Sure, go to another company, I'd love to see how the mission would go with one of those bots," Carrow said smugly. Riggs narrowed his eyes in confusion.

"There are no other REN bots," Carrow explained. "We modified some EleNa bots; spiffed up their programming, made them new shells, just enough so they weren't recognizable. Those got sent out to a few other companies as RENs to throw people who might look into it off the trail. This bot is the only one in existence that meets your specifications." Carrow sat back, reveling in his victory, but Riggs was undeterred.

"The way these missions have been going, I might just try out one of those EleNas. Hell, maybe I'll get a CAndii bot, it can't be much worse than this one," Riggs sneered. Carrows face fell. "And you know what, if I'm gonna keep having these issues, I might as well go back to using real people. They're a lot cheaper, and I don't have to deal with imbeciles like you." Carrows face was reddening, and his expression began to fume.

"Look," he began, his voice rife with irritation. "My job was to design a bot that was as close to a human as I could get it. Of course it'll come with a few human problems, that's the point. We are on the cusp of humanity with this model! Nobody's ever come anywhere close to where we are right now!" A hint of desperation crept into his tone at that last sentence. Riggs just shook his head.

"Humanity is my problem," Riggs growled, his voice low and impatient. "I don't want humanity. I want a soldier. Your new job is to eliminate those 'human problems.' If that means sending this model to the scrapyard and starting again, then that's what you'll do." A tiny little noise filtered through the speakers, a small gasp that was barely audible. That's when I remembered that we were watching this through Renee's eyes. Rage was building up in my chest at their callousness, the way they could speak about her like she wasn't even there, like she was an old Hovcar that wouldn't start. Carrow was lost for words, just shaking his head and picking at his collar, until finally he spoke.

"I just don't understand what went wrong," he muttered, staring blankly at the wall. "The last diagnostic test went perfectly." Riggs scoffed disdainfully.

"Maybe actually completing a directive for once short circuited what little rule-following behavior was left in the programming."

"It doesn't really work like that-"

"I don't care how it works!" Riggs shouted, banging his broad hand against the desk with a loud thunk. Both Lyssa and Carrow jumped in their seats, but Renee stayed perfectly still. "I just know that that thing doesn't. I need an agent I can rely on, and if you people can't provide that, then there's no reason to continue this partnership." A heavy silence fell over the office. After a few moments that felt like hours, Carrow slowly nodded his head.

"Alright, we'll start reallocating resources to the production of the REN 3.4," he sighed, his tone reluctant. Riggs sat back in his chair, a smug look twisting his brutish features. Carrow puffed out his chest slightly. "But I refuse to junk this model so quickly." Riggs sat back up.

"What are we gonna do, let it roam free? Send it to a farm upstate?" Riggs sneered. "It's filled with highly sensitive information, it needs to be taken offline." Lyssa's fingers stilled over her keyboard, and she gently cleared her throat. Both men turned to look at her, seemingly taken aback that there was someone else in the room.

"I believe I've got a solution for this particular issue, actually," she said, lacing her bony fingers together on the desk in front of her. "I can assure you, Riggs, the REN 3.3 is the most technologically advanced bot on the market today, and the company takes great care in protecting the security of our customers. I'm sure Carrow can attest to the fact that the engineers made sure that this model was as secure as possible and heavily encrypted. No hacker could access this bot, it's completely impenetrable." Crick snorted loudly. "If we'd like to keep an eye on it though, how about we put it into pool 6? It'll be far removed from society and any kind of security risks, but it'll still be close by if you need to run any tests or the like, Carrow. We can check in after a couple of months to see if different arrangements need to be made, but we might not have to worry about it at that point." After a moment, both men slowly nodded their heads.

"I suppose that's a reasonable solution," Carrow conceded.

"Alright, but this better not come back to bite us in the ass," muttered Riggs. Lyssa beamed like they'd just told her she'd been promoted.

"Lyssa, do you wanna update the database entry or should I do it?" Carrow asked. Lyssa looked slightly uncomfortable.

"Actually, I'll just be making a new one. The, ah, the problem we were discussing hadn't gone away, so I deleted the entry this morning." Riggs looked back and forth between the other two, eyes narrowed.

"Problem? What problem?" he asked suspiciously. Lyssa shifted in her seat.

"Well, the database entry for the REN 3.3 had been getting an inordinate amount of views these past few days," Lyssa explained. My breath hitched. "We thought it might be a bug with the system, but the tech team hasn't found anything."

Almost imperceptibly, the camera view skewed, like Renee had cocked her head slightly. I wished I knew what she was thinking instead of just what she was seeing. Riggs sat up in alarm.

"Why did nobody tell me about this? This could be a security breach!" he snapped. Carrow rolled his eyes, but nobody noticed.

"The company database is extremely secure," Lyssa said calmly, attempting to placate him. "Only current employees can access it, and any sensitive information is separated by clearance levels. We're fairly sure that an employee switched around the numbers in another bot's ID code and it was just a simple mistake, but we're investigating it just in case. Currently, we're working on tracing the sessions back to the employee, so we'll let you know if anything relevant comes up." I felt myself blanch. It was only a matter of time before they could trace it back to me. Riggs grumbled something I couldn't make out, and Lyssa shot Carrow a look that very clearly said Figure it out. Quickly.

Everybody stood up and shook hands in a flurry of motion and end-of-meeting formalities. Lyssa bustled over to where Renee was sitting.

"I'll shut it down so there's no issues with the transfer process," she said over her shoulder. A hand reached forward and past the camera, and then the feed went black. Crick and I stayed silent for a moment, staring at the blank screen and processing everything we'd just heard.

"God, they just turned her off without even asking?" I finally exclaimed, outraged. "I cannot believe what assholes these people are, and the way they were talking about her like she was just some... some thing- Hey, are you ok?" Crick was still staring at the screen, his face pale. He wasn't fidgeting, which almost never happened. He looked up at me, his brow furrowed.

"They're gonna put her in pool 6?" He said, his voice weak. I stared at him blankly. Pool 6 sounded a bit familiar, but I had no idea what it was. He shook his head.

"Sorry, I always forget that you never worked that closely with the bots." He looked away, fiddling with a screw in his arm. "Pool 6 is where they put the older models, the ones that are getting retired soon, bots that just aren't worth repairing, you know. They pull from pool 6 when customers want to be really rough with the bots. They don't usually last long." I sat there in silence, trying to process the information. Ziggy got up from his bed and toddled over to us. He rested his head in Crick's lap, and Crick started absentmindedly petting him.

"Holy shit," I finally managed. Crick just nodded. "Well, we've gotta get her out of there." He raised his eyebrows.

"How do you plan on doing that? You know the security's pretty tight for the bots, even for employees. Plus, if she's such a risk, they're gonna be keeping a close eye on her." I stared at the blank screen, the sound of her little gasp echoing in my head.

"I'll figure something out."

+++

"Look Crick, even if we could convince the city to throw a bot appreciation parade, why the fuck would they send out sexbots to be appreciated?" I whispered fiercely into my phonepod, using every ounce of willpower to keep from screaming in frustration. For the last few days, Crick and I had been frantically trying to come up with a rescue plan to no avail. Each idea was getting more outlandish than the last as our desperation grew. Over the phone, Crick snorted.

"Oh trust me, I know of quite a few city officials who vigorously appreciate those bots on the regular." With a long-suffering sigh, I let my head bang against the wall. Crick echoed my sigh, followed by a light scratching noise. "Alright then Kel-bells, let's hear your genius idea of the day." I turned and stared at the large, featureless steel door that had been taunting me for the past five minutes. This was the entrance to the bot inventory, somewhere I'd never been before, but was surely the place they were keeping Renee. This side was connected to the warehouse for easy transfer of new bots and ones in need of repair. The other side connected to the retail building, where clients came to... enjoy the bots.